Treasure Energy – Evolving Skies
Date Reviewed: September 18, 2021
Ratings Summary:
Standard: 1.50
Expanded: 1.50
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Vince
Treasure Energy seems like another one of those cards that involve being in the prize zone while face down. It is a Special Energy card that provides (C), but if you were to take Treasure Energy from the prize zone while it’s face down, you get to attach that energy to one of your Pokemon instead of putting that card into your hand.
Unfortunately, Treasure Energy is extremely unreliable because of certain factors:
-If you grabbed this card from the prize zone while it’s face-up, you don’t get to attach that energy card to your Pokemon.
-If any of your Treasure Energy aren’t prized, then there goes your extra energy attachment as well as being a wasted slot(s) in your deck.
-It only provides a Colorless energy, which doesn’t help you as much if the attack cost didn’t involve any Colorless friendly cost.
It’s another nice niche concept, but trying to rely on it will make players extremely disappointed more often than not because they couldn’t get Treasure Energy to work as often. Even if it does work, they can try to either outright OHKO your Pokemon or discard that Special Energy afterward.
Ratings:
Standard: 1
Expanded: 1
Otaku
Treasure Energy (SW – Evolving Skies 165/203) is a Special Energy that provides [C] Energy while attached to a Pokémon, with an additional effect that activates if you take Treasure Energy as a face down Prize card during your turn. If that happens, before you add it to your hand you can instead show your opponent and then attach it to one of your Pokémon. There’s a lot to unpack here, and most of it isn’t good. There is quite the list of things that can go wrong with Treasure Energy:
- You take it as a Prize during your opponent’s turn or during the Pokémon Checkup.
- If it is face-up when taken as a Prize.
- If it leaves your Prizes in a manner that does not count as “taking a Prize”.
- If you add it to your hand, even if taken as a Prize.
- You may take it as your final Prize or Prizes.
- Nothing you have in play needs it.
- Whatever you attach it to gets KO’d before you can make use of Treasure Energy.
Most of these are self-explanatory, but I’ll expand upon the last four. All cards are useless when they’re your final Prize taken, but they also can be used to their fullest if drawn into normally during the game. That isn’t the case with Treasure Energy, so I’m citing it as a problem. Yes, you can attach it as a [C] Energy, so at least it is not totally worthless, but a manually attached Treasure Energy is worth less than a basic Energy card. This point also addresses the state of the modern metagame: many Pokémon are worth multiple Prizes when taken. That means more chances for Treasure Energy to be in the Prizes taken from a single KO… but also more chances it will be among the last Prizes taken.
As you have little to no control over when you take Treasure Energy, nothing you have in play may need it. The odds were low enough I didn’t bother listing it, but there’s even a small, small chance nothing you have in play can even use it, or the much better chance that nothing in play can use it well. The fact that most decks KO opposing Pokémon through attacking for damage means Treasure Energy is quite likely to Activate during the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it period after you’ve attacked, scored a KO, and taken your Prizes but your turn has technically not ended. Which means your opponent has an entire turn to render the bonus attachment of Treasure Energy useless.
All hope isn’t lost, though. If we were just relying on decks to run Treasure Energy and hope it ended up in the Prizes, this would be a one-out-of-five, with the only question being whether this counts as Johnny or Timmy*bait. Now, it is still Johnny bait, but with a tiny, tiny chance of becoming a legitimate combo for some deck. That is all because of Peonia. This Supporter lets you add three of your Prize cards to your hand, then replace those Prize cards with cards from your (newly enlarged) hand. In other words, we finally have a way to get multiple Treasure Energy into your Prize cards. We still have a problem, though; how to get Treasure Energy from your deck (or discard pile) into your hand. I don’t have a good solution for that. The best I can think of is trying to build some crazy Greedy Dice deck in Expanded with Treasure Energy also included as a consolation… uh… prize.
I suppose something similar might work in Standard, just because stuff getting stuck in Prizes can be an issue in general. Which is just barely enough to avoid minimum marks for both Formats.
Ratings
- Standard: 2/5
- Expanded: 2/5
*Yes, I’m more flexible with how I define the psychographic profiles originally created for Magic: The Gathering. After all, I think I learned about this way to classify player types before I even learned how to (barely) play MtG.
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